DollfieDream – Clogs and Sneakers

October 17, 2021October 17, 2021

Doll plans 2021/2022

It might seem odd that I am already talking about the year 2022 but when it comes to dolls the waiting game is long. After my SO suggested I should try and take more photos, the interest in dolls came back to me earlier this year. It also helps that I have a better display case these days. I had a few dolls on my wanted list and some opportunities arised for me to procure them but that only counts towards the Supia and Lillycat order XD. The others just crossed my path.

In July I placed an order with Supia for a Nael with a Ballarina body and a seperate Haeun head. No face ups, either doing them myself or commissioning someone. I kinda need to admit that this doll already has an outfit lying ready for her. Supia has gorgeous headsculpts so I might order a few more in the future and with future I mean 2023 haha.

I ordered the new normal type skin and I am a bit worried as there are a lot of issues with new type tan and heavy discolouration after only a few weeks. There might be no issue at all but I can’t help it.

This order might arrive before the end of the year, 60 working days is the norm but I’ve seen a lot of people ordering during their special sale so it might be a little wee longer.

Next up is a Lillycat Lulu in light caramel skin. I’ve always wanted a doll made by her and thought her chibi line was too cute to pass up. Lillycat is one of the many doll makers that have been hit by recasters. It’s really sad to see her dolls pop up on platforms for a fraction of the price. I always say to myself, if I can’t afford the price it is just not meant to be. Pretending to have a doll by her that was ripped off by someone who doesn’t give a toss about copyright is just bad.

Lulu is only 29 cm tall and finding clothes for her will be a bit of a challenge because her body is a bit chubbier than a regular YO-SD. But since I’ve never owned a Lillycat doll before, it might not be so bad. I have a few YO-SD outfits that I could try on her, otherwise it’s time to whip out my sewing machine again. She has fairy ears so it is quite possible none of my wigs will fit her but we will see.

This one was a bit of a surprise for me and as a big Y’shtola fan I couldn’t let this girl out of my clutches. And the aftermarket price will be insane so it’s best to get her now.

As some of you know that I am a big fan of the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV. I’ve been playing FF for years since VII came out and played both of the online versions XI and XIV. So now Square Enix joined forced with Volks to bring our favourite catgirl Y’shtola out as a Dollfie Dream. They did it before with NieR Automata (which were gorgeous but not my thing) and I just couldn’t pass this girl up. She has a bit of a hefty pricetag but that is because she comes fully clothed in her pretty Black Mage outfit and staff. We are talking about a 99.800 Yen pricetag. I can’t recall if I do or do not pay salestax at Volks. But my SO wanted to go half on her with me, as a gift for our engagement. I can’t wear jewellery so this makes up for the lack of a ring haha. I took a sneak peak at some of the prices of an engagement ring but wow those rings can be expensive @_@.

I know for sure I am going to have a terrible time styling her wig as Volks dolls wigs never get even close to what you see in the pictures. The wigs are good quality but not styled at all. Hopefully they will put out a tutorial because it’s not really Y’shtola if her wig is just straight. The dress will be stunning for sure as all my fullset DD’s have great clothes. Let’s just hope the delivery guy doesn’t play footie with my box.

She won’t ship out until December 2022 so I’d be waiting over a year for her. But this is not the longest I’ve waited. My Dollshe ordered took 14 months ^^;;

And finally a little Sharkboy or girl in tan skin which I preordered today. He or she has little shark teeth which I probably have no faith in giving the face up myself haha. Even with a tinier body than the Lillycat Lulu finding clothes will be a challenge. Maybe even finding shoes will be a nightmare. But I couldn’t resist this little one and so the collection grows even further.

They even have a Dragon up on the website but I had to make a choice. I have a few vampie teeth dolls already and none with full chompers XD.

After a hiatus of more then a year the Doll and Bear festival will be held again near me next weekend. I’m going to check out if they have some tiny furniture or anything else that I can use for my photo sessions. I’ll keep you posted on the arrival of these cuties. UwU

July 18, 2021July 18, 2021

July Volks order for my dolls

I bought my oldest Volks doll around 9 years ago, a Saber Alter v2. This was around the time that I moved to a different country, lost touch with a lot of my doll collecting friends and barely had funds to purchase anything doll related. Moving back and ending up with a better job it gave me more spending space for my hobby. Having a partner that doesn’t ridicule your hobby also helps.

My anime-type doll collection grew with Chezka, Ai and Megumi but finding proper clothing for them is a bit hard. Sure Etsy had a lot of lovely clothes but Volks keeps dragging me back to their fashion shop. And each month they bring out a newsletter with lots of goodies. My last order was in May of this year, so it was okay for me to put out another.

I really wanted the women’s hakama set for DD (1/3) and MDD (1/4) but the release was at 10:00 JST which meant I had to wake up at 3 o’clock at night to put my order through. Usually the website will crash when a lot of people are trying to purchase their most wanted. I figured if the items were gone when I woke up it wouldn’t be a great loss.

Suffering from chronic insomnia I woke up at around 5:30 (Yes, on my day off) and decided to check if what I wanted was still available. Maybe because it is limited to one per person, they still have the outfits that I wanted. Lucky me =D!

While men wear hakama on formal and informal occassions, women rarely wear hakama, except for graduation and for traditional Japanese sports as kyūdō. It is a shame because a hakama looks very pretty on a woman. Saber already wears a hakama but I wanted the ‘official’ Volks version. Now I can dress up Ai and Megumi. Have a big graduation party, which only makes partly sense as Megumi is still in middle school lol.

I was already paying a wopping ¥4850 (approx. $44) in shipping, it would be a shame if I kept this order small. Import duties are always paid but I’d like to make my package worth the cost of shipping.

So bought a DDH-22 type head (very cute on MDD bodies), a pair of gripping hands and internal hand frames for MDD and DD. I keep switching out the hands of my dolls with internal frame on, trying to pry the hands, especially the MDD size hands, is a pain in the rear.

Last year I couldn’t participate in the DD Gacha grab but it looks like this year there isn’t much interest in it. I added two to my order and it can either contain a pair of undies, a t-shirt or a pair of special eyes. I am hoping on either the eyes or the undies.

DD Gacha bag
T-shirts
Undies
Special Eyes

The last thing I added to my order was a saddle stand. I bought cheap versions on Aliexpress but alas with a lot of things on Ali it’s a terrible quality rip off. Won’t be doing that again. Saddle stands are easier to use as you just straddle your girl.

So now the waiting game starts. Last time it took around three weeks for them to ship my order. Covid-19 and big order volumes has increased the waiting time but I am a patient person. Volks had never let me down with their quality. Hopefully I will get really lucky with those Gatcha bags.

October 4, 2020October 4, 2020

BJD’s and scalpers

Sometimes I check certain Facebook groups while waiting for my lottery win Dollfie Dream Kizuna Ai to be shipped. I am not really an active participant in discussions on FB, just a lurker. I did post that I won the lottery bid just because, no real reason too but I wanted to be a bit more active. FB has grown to become a massive pain in the rear for me, lots of negative energy which is not good for a person like me. So I just lurk but I wanted to be a bit more active in the doll hobby since Covid-19 has hit us globally.

My plan this year would be visiting the Volks store in either Tokyo or Osaka and build my own custom doll but pandemic hit and travelling to Japan is not an option anymore (even if I could, I just didn’t want to travel with this shit still running free in the world). That was the main point for joining the lottery. First ever and I won, weeeeee. I had to wait a week for the results to come out and waiting with others was quite fun. We kept discussing our plans with our new girl.

Her face is what attracted me to her, don’t really care for her full set outfit.

After the results came in, some were really disappointed but if you lived in the USA, you could still join the Volks USA lottery. So Americans and Canadians got a second shot at her. Some people were already putting out threads to buy Kizuna Ai if you changed your mind while you wait for her to be shipped. It took a month between the announcement of the results and the shipping of the actual doll.

In one of the threads the discussion about scalpers came up. Scalpers are people who buy up much wanted items to resell them at a higher price. You have these fuckers in any consumer field: tickets for concerts & festivals, sports events and products. You wonder how they do it in the doll hobby as some items are limited to 1 per person. Well here is how: on a live event at one of the stores the scalpers pays others to stand in line to claim the doll. I’ve seen a video of a guy passing out a wad of cash to around 8 girls waiting in line. Infuriating. Online lotteries is the same practice, he has others set up accounts and uses them as mules for the transaction and shipping.

The main problem with this is as long as suckers keep paying the scalpers for overpriced stuff, they keep doing it. Back to the discussion because some of the members said they really need to have this girl. I mean I am lucky but I have missed out on preorders before and I’m just a stubborn bastard because over my dead body I will pay double or even triple the price. But discussions like these make me retreat again from FB-communities. You can’t change their minds if they want something at all costs and just leaves me annoyed.

May 23, 2020May 23, 2020

BJD Bhiner, a Taobao proxy

For my birthday I decided I wanted a new Dollfie Dream girl. Initially I had planned to get one during a trip to Japan later this year, but with Covid-19 going around I doubt we will be able to travel. Dollfie Dream are ball-jointed dolls made by Volks and they are iconic for their anime/manga look. I own one already, she is a 1/3 scale girl but I really wanted a MDD which is a smaller scale girl (1/4 size). Because I want to avoid the hassle with customs, I normally try to buy through European dealers and for Volks doll that’s a bit hard. I only know of two official dealers here in Europe which are Sakura Dreams and Papettes Store.

Just received notification that my girl is in the process of being shipped, but I’ll write about her when she gets here.

In my doll collection I do not have a lot of 1/4 scale dolls (they are around 45cm and called MSD), I have either SD (60cm) or YOSD (30cm). The MSD that I have is a slim version which means that her clothes are more mature and don’t really fit the bulkier shaped MSD dolls. So I need more shoes and clothes for my girl that’s on the way. I had already bought an outfit from Volks so she won’t be nude when she gets here. But she still needs more.

Etsy is my normal go to for doll apparel but I really wanted to try ordering from somewhere different. I’ve been eyeing Taobao for a while but ordering is difficult as some sellers don’t ship abroad and everything is in Chinese. Taobao is like an online marketplace, where sellers offer their handmade products. There is also a lot of knock-off products on there so you have to be a bit careful with what you buy. Orchid Dolls‘ review on BJD Bhiner gave me a proxy service I could try out.

Bhiner is one of the many proxy services that help you make purchases from Taobao. They communicate with the sellers and collect your order in their warehouse before shipping it overseas. For their services they will charge you a fee. What differs them from the other proxies, is that they have a website that collects a lot of BJD related sales on one page but you can also add links from other Taobao sellers if you find something off-site that you want to buy through them.

The sale pages look a lot at what you find on Aliexpress and ordering almost works the same way. I think Taobao is owned by the same owner as Aliexpress. Only difference is that you can quote the items that you have in your cart, Bhiner verifies with the seller if the item is in stock and confirm this with you. It’s your own responsibility to not wait to long with your purchase or else it could be gone.

Payment is always upfront as they have to pay the sellers and the shipping costs to the warehouse. When the items are received by Bhiner, you will get sent photo proof that the items have arrived and get the second quote for shipping from China to the Netherlands. I was amused to see that from mainland China you can have your parcel shipped by train. How cool is that!

I ordered 5 items from Bhiner. 1 wig, 2 pairs of shoes, a graduation hakama for my DD girl and a Neko hat. The hat is a custom order, which means it can’t be refunded. I had more in the cart but the order was already at $99 so I called it quits. I find it easier to spend money on clothes and shoes for my dolls than on clothes on myself ^^;;.

So on an order of $99 the agent fee is $6.67, which is very low in my opinion. I had to pay around $14,90 in domestic shipping to the warehouse and now I wait until it arrives there. I have no idea how long it will take, one item in my order will take around 5-10 days before it ships.

I’ll write again when it arrives at my house.

January 13, 2020January 13, 2020

AliExpress – Dollfie Dream clothes 1

It is always hit and miss with AliExpress when purchasing stuff for dolls. Dolls I will never buy on Ali, as most of them are recasts.
Recasts happen when somenos purchases a doll from a sculptor and then copies it for anyone who wants to have it cheaply, selling it for a much lower price. Usually the quality is inferior and.. well.. the design is stolen. So no dolls bought on Ali for me.

For other stuff like doll clothes and shoes, you’ll sometimes find good quality on there. Lately I’ve noticed people reselling stuff from Ali on Etsy for a higher price. Heck, I even saw people resell a toilet bag bought on Ali for €2 for €9,95 on Bol.com. It’s not against the law but it is annoying, especially when you find out the quality sucks afterwards. So with doll clothes I am a bit cautious when buying for the first time from a new seller I discovered on Ali. Losing €10 on a skirt for a doll that looks terrible isn’t a complete waste of money.

It is quite hard to find fitting clothes for my Smart Doll and Dollfie Dream as they have anime features, extremely long legs, tiny waists and sometimes huge breasts. I try to keep the chest size small or medium, as I really don’t like the big ones, unless I can cover it up with clothing. My normal SD clothing doesn’t really fit my anime style dolls as they are too wide and sometimes too short. So slowly I started building up my Smart Doll and DD clothing collection. First try out was with WAW Dollhouse and from them I bought an inexpensive skirt that costed me €10,01 in total including shipping.

I am surprised by the quality of this skirt. The fabric feel sturdy to the touch and the finish in brown stitching is done neatly. It has two functional pockets and the final finish was done with a overlock machine. For this type of quality I would have gladly paid more for this skirt. For the record, I have spent over $100 on a single outfit for dolls.

The waist is a bit wide, but I cover it over with t-shirts or sweaters. The store had two versions: the white with blue stripes that I bought and a darker denim. The darker one goes on my next to-buy-list along with a few other items now that I tested the seller. All and all I am very happy with my purchase and will definitely shop there again.